Interesting Facts About Caucasian Race: Great Anthropology Discipline

The term ‘Caucasian race’ was introduced by a German philosopher-Christoph Meiners. His term was offered broader circulation in the 1790’s by Johann Friedrich, the German professor of medicine and also a member of the British Royal Society. He’s regarded one of the great founders of the anthropology discipline.The Caucasian race (also known as Caucasoid) is a grouping of humans historically considered as a biological taxon, including all or some of the populations of North Africa, Europe, Western Asia, the Horn of Africa, South Asia and Central Asia. The term has been utilized in biological anthropology for several people from these parts of the world, without necessarily considering the skin tone. First introduced in early anthropometry and racial science, the term represented one of the 3 purported primary races (Negroid, Mongoloid, and Caucasoid) of a human being. Even though its utility and validity are disputed by several anthropologists, Caucasoid as a known biological classification stays in inadequate use in the forensic anthropology.
The treatise of Meiners was widely read in the ancient German intellectual circles, despite low criticism of its scholarship. Meiners did propose a taxonomy of humankind according to 2 races: Mongolians and Caucasians. He believed Caucasians to be more physically pretty than the Mongolians, especially as they had paler skin. Also, he claimed Caucasians were more morally virtuous and more sensitive than Mongolians. Later he would make same distinctions within a Caucasian group, concluding that all Germans were very virtuous and attractive individuals on earth. The term ‘Caucasian’ derived from the Transcaucasia/Southern Caucasus region (or what are currently the countries of Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia) since he regarded the individuals of this particular area to be the archetype for the grouping.
Classification of Meiners wasn’t grounded on any scientific standards. It was Blumenbach who provided it a wider audience and scientific credibility, by grounding it in the new quantitative technique of craniometry. However, Blumenbach didn’t credit Meiners with his taxonomy claiming to have created it himself -though his justification precisely points to Meiners’ appealing viewpoint of the Caucasus origins.
In the US, the term ‘Caucasoid’ is used in disciplines like epidemiology, craniometry, medicine and forensic anthropology and forensic archaeology. It’s also related to notions of racial typology.
Apart from its use in the forensic anthropology and other related fields, the name ‘Caucasian’ has usually been used in the US in a unique, social context to designate a group normally referred to as ‘White people.’ ‘White’ also seem to be a self-reporting entry in the United States Census. From 1917 to 1965, immigration to the US was limited by the national origins quota. The Supreme Court in the US versus Bhagat Singh Thind (1923) opted that Asian/Indians were unqualified for citizenship since, although deemed ‘Caucasian’ anthropologically, they weren’t white like other European descendants since many laypersons didn’t consider them to be ‘white’ people.
This denoted an adjustment from the earlier opinion of the Supreme Court in Ozawa vs. the US, in which it had clearly approved of 2 lower court cases handling ‘high caste Hindus’ to be ‘free white individuals’ within the meaning of naturalization act. Later, the government lawyers realized that the Supreme Court had finally ‘withdrawn’ this agreement in Thind. In 1946, the United States Congress managed to pass a new law creating a small immigration quota for all Indians that also allowed them to become free citizens. However, main changes to the immigration law only came in 1965, when several earlier racial restrictions on the immigration policies were lifted. This is where the high confusion on whether the American Hispanics are considered as ‘white,’ as the term Hispanic formerly applied to the Spanish heritage but has always expanded to include all persons with the Hispanophone ancestry. In other nations, the term Hispanic isn’t closely associated with the race, but with the Spanish cultural affiliation and language.
The United States National Library of Medicine (USNLM) formerly used the term ‘Caucasian’ as a race. Nonetheless, it later stopped such adoption for the very narrow geographical term European that previously only applied to the subset of Caucasoids.
Here are some of the quick, interesting facts you probably didn’t about Caucasian race:
1. Traditionally, the phrase ‘Caucasian race’ was heavily used by the German philosopher Christoph Meiners in his book ‘The Outline of History of Mankind (1785).’
2. Meiners also proposed a taxonomy of humankind depending on 2 races: Mongolians and Caucasians.
3. The (USNLM) United States National Library of Medicine usually used the term ‘Caucasian’ when referring to race.
4. The Skin color among Caucasoids ranges significantly, from reddish-white, pale, olive, through to dark-brown tones.
5. In his former racial typology, Meiners states that Caucasians had the most delicate, whitest, and most blooming skin.